Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Memorial Day weekend

After begging and pleading and numerous cancelled attempts, my Sister and her kids finally made it up to visit us at the new house for the weekend. 

They live in the city so to be out here with all the animals was way cool for her kids.


They literally spent HOURS with the chickens.


... and climbing the coop


... and playing in the yard




It was an easy weekend with no additional entertainment needed as they were all so happy outside... and inside with Grandma Bonnie's candy. Grandma came to hang out with the kids and brought an obscene amount of candy with her.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Getting ready

We get to bring our goats home next week! 

Everyone we have talked to says that goats just need a "simple 3 sided shelter".  I think Eric's idea of simple is different from most.  He has been spending the last several weeks digging out the foundation for the goat shelter and building the walls in the garage. 


Today he was able to move all the walls out of the garage and get them all vertical. I know Cami and the goats will appreciate the space, windows and storage area and be glad they are not stuck in a "simple three sided shelter".

The new and improved Garden

When we bought the house the garden was totally neglected. Mostly weeds and some of the beds full of iris and tulips. Eric did not want to use railroad ties because of the creosote possibly getting into our food. I really wanted to keep them because they were built well and sturdy enough to sit on the side.



After researching our options we decided to dig out all the old dirt (with help from a young man from our church). The bottoms were already lined with chicken wire covered by rocks.


We lined the sides of the bed with a thick pond liner and fill them with all new planting soil/ garden dirt.


Eric dug trenches and put in all new PVC water lines to each of the beds and I put together all the drip lines to the plants. 


Then he put cedar benches all around the tops and I shoveled in two yards of new bark (we still need more) and planted all the beds.



I found a great web site that allowed me to put in the measurements of the garden and beds and the items we wanted to plant. It tells you what to plant where and how much space each plant will take. This was just what I needed as I am new to this gardening thing. You can use their garden planner with a free 30 day trial (that's what I did) HERE.

Now that our garden looks so good I hope I can become a gardener worthy of this garden!




Speaking about gardening, Haley has started mowing the lawn. The first time she did it, it was soooo sloppy she had to re-do it twice. Now she is a pro and does it beautifully without even complaining!

Friday, May 27, 2011

Animal update

Cami is gorgeous as ever. So far she weighs 55 lbs and can take me down easily if she is over excited. We are working on that. Her colar was getting way to small so I bought her a new one... clearly I over estimated how big she is.




Who needs fake lions to flank their door....


Cami loves living here. There is always a pile of dirt or large stack of firewood to climb on and she has recently decided that she really likes the trampoline. 



She still finds it totally unfair that the other dogs get to hang out with us inside. Hopefully after the goats get here she will be so happy working she won't care about coming inside... as much.


We have had quite the chick nursery at our house. In order to get all the groovy breeds we wanted we needed to do some special orders... with four different ship dates. You can't put chicks together until they are all pretty close to the same size so that meant four times the water and food feeders to change/clean out. Normally I do a lot of the chicken chores but my ultra sensitive nose cannot handle the chickens right now, so Eric has been doing it all. We had the pink coop in the garage with one batch, two big horse feeders in the garage with 2 more batches...


And the youngest batch was in the laundry room bathroom.  Luckily we have recently been able to successfully transition 3 of the batches outside to the big coop and we only have one left in the garage. I LOVE my chickens, when they are outside :)


We visited our goats again. They are not ready to leave their mommas yet. We should be able to bring them home the first week of June. We can't wait!



They were de-budded the day before we visited. I'm glad I did not have to do that or even watch it.



Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Love Letters from my girls

Lucy has always left me little love letters. To thank me for doing something (like the laundry) or just to tell me she loves me. It has been rubbing off on Ruby and I have been getting some from her too. I recently started taking photos of all these love letters... I only wish I had started sooner.








Sunday, May 08, 2011

Happy Mother's Day!



Monday, May 02, 2011

Our driveway


I can't help but smile every time I drive down our driveway and see happy chickens running to the fence to greet me... and they make breakfast!

 
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